Moving to Porto, Portugal

I’ll try to dig up the contact information of a Portuguese pilot who helped me a lot a few years ago while touring Portugal. He is/was based at Maia and I’ve flown there from Spain myself. Will PM you if I can still find the info. I don’t know what the economic crisis has done to flying in Portugal, but if Spain is anything to go by, then I’d imagine the scene much diminished. That said, it’s a great country to fly in, loads of airfields (mostly towered!), beautiful scenery and ATC with perfect English. Great or touring. Loads better then Spain is this regard. Btw, language shouldn’t be a big problem, the general level of English in Portugal is much, much better than in, say, Spain, so you won’t have problems finding your way round.

Anything they do differently there from UK?

Comments like that always amuse me a bit. It’s the UK that is the odd one out with weird non-standard procedures, not the other way round. Portugal is just a normal country to fly in. Enjoy!

PS: have sent a private msg via another group to the guy in question, stand by

I can say nothing about flying in Portugal, but have travelled there several times and can testify the Portuguese are a warm and open nation, very different from their Spanish neighbours. Even in the smallest village you will find several people who have some kind of English, and if you have some French that is still better known there. The reason is many Portuguese spend a couple of years abroad, there are largish Portuguese colonies in Paris and in Luxembourg, for example.

For the rest, your message makes me turn green for envy, there wouldn’t be an opening for a Unix infrastructure/OS engineer in your project?

As an afterthought: FWIW here is a list of aerodromes in Portugal but mind you it comes from a microlight organisation so not all fields might suit you.

I flew there a few months back, from Caiscais, Tires, in an Aero Club De Portugal aircraft. It sits on the Lisbon CTZ, and very much driven by VRP/ transit lanes. Flying South you go under the main ILS approach to Lisbons runway 35. All pretty standard stuff, and the controllers spoke reasonable English….

In conversation with the CFi however, the CAA regime is dire. So bad, that they were, or had, all aircraft on the German register. He showed me aircraft that had WIP, some minor damage, that had not flown in five years, due to paperwork issues. Private owners had almost given up hope in some of these circumstances.

He reckoned, that unless you were on a foreign registry, GA was becoming a non event, if you required any STC work, or in some cases, an annual, where ’ work’ was required, then life could get very tough.

That should not affect you, if flying from aclub, but it did give an indication of the ’ system’, which made me think ours was not too bad!!!!!

Good luck with your flying.

Strange, therefore, that Netjets chose the Portuguese register for Europe?

Yes indeed. Perhaps they managed to negotiate a good deal – regarding tax and/or social security for crew and/or maintenance.

I imagine basing a fleet of Bizjets in a country is a somewhat different proposition from running a couple of C172s…..

I heard, from someone who knew this well at the time, that Portugal was the only JAA country which would allow Netjets to run their “time block based” scheme with an AOC. The UK CAA would not allow it.

Geeky,

I have flown through the north of Portugal about ten years ago. There are (were?) two very beautiful coastal airfields there, Aveiro (LPAV) and Espinho (LPIN). The latter is closer to Porto, and the more beautiful one, but with an awfully short and bumpy runway. You should check out both them, but I don’t exactly know their operational status as of today.

That said, like in all the southern countries, bureaucracy has almost killed light GA and the most fun is nowadays gained from ultralight flying and that’s what I would recommend you to do. Problem is you might need to get the portugese ultralight license in order to fly solo which might prove impossible if you don’t talk portugese fluently.

On the other hand, you might need to some anyway, since most of the airfields will require some portugese RT…

On the other hand, you might need to some anyway, since most of the airfields will require some portugese RT…

Bosco, where do you get that from? I have flown in Portugal several times (not to UL fields, though), and ALL RT was in English, and pretty good at that.